XP vs. Vista Again, XP Drivers, Jefferson County Wiki, Cellphone Scams, Strange Lost Notes and Numbers!

Been awhile since I've posted anything here. Winter's not exactly exciting in the "new stuff" department.

XP vs. Vista Again, XP Drivers on Newer 'Vista' Computers

In my home office when faced with the choice between Vista and XP; despite all efforts to switch over or at least give Vista a chance - I still go back to XP. Officially, when it comes to customers - I give them the options and let them make the choice without trying to bias them.

On my new laptop XP blazes, Vista lags despite having gotten rid of any unnecessary programs and such, and after lots of tweaking. I think, as I mentioned previously, your regular Windows user isn't going to notice all that much with a brand new machine. Or isn't observant enough to notice the speed differences.

Now all I need to do is get the 64 bit version of Windows XP (the proper one as there's technically two versions that MS calls "64-bit").

One of the biggest problems in switching back to XP from Vista on newer computers, it seems, is getting a driver that will work. A number of Vista drivers do work fine in XP, and if you have an older computer (i.e. more then five or so months old, heh heh) then you'll probably be able to readily find the drivers labeled for XP for your device. For the most part the people's computers that I have been stitching back to XP have been moderately easy to find drivers for.

But the newer stuff can be more of a headache. And some of the devices, either smart ones or "dumb" ones, need to be installed in various obscure orders. Lots of time involved, and this seems to be getting more involved as the XP-equivalent drivers aren't referenced on manufacturer's websites or driver-download sites.

I've yet to find a coprocessor driver for my laptop while running XP. But without it the computers still renders photo-realistic landscapes at an incredible rate and makes Vista look sluggish.

If you have an Acer 5520-5334 and need XP drivers for it let me know. I'll eventually put a list of them (and maybe downloads) here, as others have for their retro-installs for various computers.


Cooling.

It's amazing how much getting a laptop up off a desk, or your lap, can go toward keeping it cool. Even a cheap laptop stand or a homemade one helps a lot. And the ones with fans are great.

Remember - heat is the enemy of most all electronics.

Picked up a positively antique device - a LAN modem. Fun to play around with.

Cellphone Scams

Geez, I got whacked with a $9.99 bill for "data downloads" on my cellphone. The phone company took care of it but I did some investigating anyway.

It seems that this company 'New Motion' has a thing where you sign up, they send you a confirmation number in text messaging, and then they sign you up for some sort of bidding thing where you can win stuff. Bidzforprizes or something like that. Like hundreds of other sites.

Except, well, I never signed up for it, I never sent them back their confirmation number and yet I still somehow got signed up for a $9.99 download that I didn't even receive.

Some more research discovered lots of other people in the same boat, including lots of related problems with phone companies who insisted the person DID sign up.

Some people are trying to get some class action suits against them since no one else seems to be stopping them. How many other scam are there like this, and how many more will there be if someone doesn't make a stink a bout this?

Another example of technology getting ahead of law and the ability of the law to deal with it.

Jefferson County Wiki

I love this area. A lot of times I don't like the people, but I love the area and it's beauty and it's history and the things that can be done in it.

I have a Jefferson County history page and a Jefferson County History and Genealogy mailing list and such. I've done a lot of research and writing about the area, especially the history of it.

And I thought a wiki where others could add their own research and pictures would be great. So over time I set a couple wiki's up, but none of them really took off. I didn't have the time or the support to get them going to to work on them much.

A local webboard, the Jeffcowebboard.com (which I started so many years ago and handed off to others, and haven't had anything to do with for quite awhile), has some organizers who had the same idea.

While e-mailing them on an unrelated note the main admin there (Mr.EddieLarue) let me know that they had started a wiki up on a free hosted wiki website.

I took a look at it and a lot of people had already done a load of work with it, even though it hadn't been opened to the public yet. But there were also a lot of limitations to the free hosted version.

I suggested that I could set them up a real wiki with the ability to do everything they'd ever want to do with it.

My offer was accepted and I began evaluating wiki software and installing it. At one point I had four wiki's running at once (using prefixes in MYSQL databases is the greatest thing since white bread - you can share a database with any number of pieces of software without setting up more databases).

I finally settled on Tikiwiki, which is a full CMS program with leanings toward the features for a wiki. Nice program, but very very complex from the admin's side.

So many features, but a great program. I did a little hacking to get some of the features the way I wanted them, lots of research on more hacks and mods, and put quite a lot of work into the logo and display and such, not to mention working out some good practices for those entering data.

I plan on continuing to help until the rest of those who will run it get used to the features, then back out. I've also added and edited a number of items for it and plan on continuing with that indefinitely. Hopefully there will be a number of people adding their research over many years time.

It will be opening to the public tonight and we hope it will be a great success. As long as it is not abused I think we'll eventually have a number of people who will both have an interest in it as well as will want to help build it by adding entries. We'll have to see how it goes. Here's the address for this wiki.

(Note - delaying this post for a little later. I doubt many people are reading this blog but I don't want to release the website address for the wiki until closer to the time when it will be officially opened.)

Strange Lost Notes and Numbers!

I have a number of note keeping programs and files on my computer.

There's customer stuff - notes about them and sometimes idiosyncrasies, notes about their computers and what I've done on the computers, contact info, log-in stuff for their websites, website address, whether they paid on time, etc.

Then there's my own business stuff. How much to charge for this, how much to charge for that.

And my personal stuff - passwords and log in info, notes on this or that.

It's all pretty well organized and indexed.

But sometimes I come across things that I have no idea about.

Like a bunch of IP numbers in one file. What website were they from? I assume they were from a website I set up for someone and that these are a bunch of banned members or spammers. But I'm not sure. Why did I keep it? For future reference? Because I just needed a temporary place to store them or because I thought I would need them in the future? Should I keep it, delete it?

Here's another one. A large number of number sequences in groups of two. I have a certain ability for pattern recognition and they seem to mean something (or maybe the reason I kept them is npushing at the back of my mind). But I'm just not sure.

Or this one. A short sequence of mixed letters and numbers. A serial number? A registration number? Something important or not? Who knows?

And this - a person's name, address, telephone number; but I don't ever recall contacting the peson or calling her or what it's in reference to. Should I keep it?

If I keep every scrap of data I'll have a filled harddrive eventually.

Another - what looks like GPS coordinates. Now this one I can check out. Ah yes, some measurements I did of some ruins. Already have transferred these to my GPS database but hadn't deleted the original file. With a little trigonometry (or the right program) and a couple overlapping checks you can figure out the area of an object or the size of any object with your GPS.

Perhaps I need to make notes about my notes. ;)

A weather guy in Syracuse wants to have me stand in front of my webcam and talk to him on the air via my cellphone. Kinda strange - a poor man's remote.

Disable 'UAC is off' Security Center Reminder II - doesn't work, Opinions and Advice II, Remote & Voice-Activated Camera Picture Taking

Disable 'UAC is off' Security Center Reminder II - doesn't work!

A couple of people e-mailed me after my last entry, saying "Hey, your hack for turning off the Security Center reminder for a disabled UAC didn't work."

Uhm, yea, sorry - for me it worked after one reset but not after another (after I installed some other software and needed to reset).

A little extra digging seems to point toward the abbreviation "AUC" not always meaning "User Account Control", so the entry I thought I had found wasn't referring to the correct thing after all.

Sorry, the general consensus so far is that if you disable UAC then your Security Center is always going to show red. The only thing to do is live with it until a hack comes along for it, or turn it off completely - which is what I did. I disabled it directly in SERVICES as well as turned it off via it's own applet.

Opinions and Advice II

An e-mail from an old friend/customer about my entry (didn't even know he reads this) - apologizing for jokingly "criticizing" (his word) that my pathway from my driveway to the house had a few inches of snow in it. (BTW, my response was something like - "Dude, then don't wear sneakers in winter time!")

I hope that my previous entry didn't come across seeming that I don't welcome opinions and advice from anyone. I have no problem with people giving me advice or their opinions. That's one of the ways we learn things, both from strangers as well as friends and family.

My point is that I get peeved when someone's opinion is presented as indisputable fact and the person gets pissed when I don't take their advice or when I even question (GASP!) them about it, when the advice is unwarranted or obviously unwelcome, or when rudeness is coached in "a person's opinion" or their supposed "honesty" (the latter seems to be used as a great excuse for rudeness and lack of civility in general), or when someone wants their opinion known to you but won't say it to your face - resorting to games. The latter is low, very low.

So, to sum - don't hesitate to give me your opinion or advice if you think it is warranted; just don't necessarily expect me to take it.

Remote & Voice-Activated Camera Picture Taking

Anyway, on to other things...

My previous digital camera had a number of pieces of software, third-party of course, that would allow things like computer-controlled picture taking.

My new Canon has this as a feature of some software (ZoomBrowser I think it's called, a moderately-good and feature-filled piece of software for being stock) that comes with it (as a side note - this particular extra, interestingly enough, only works when you connect the camera through a USB 2.0 port, not 1.0 or 1.1 - don't know why. I have both on my computer).

And also there is a piece of (free) software for Canon's that allows this feature too - http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/

This is some incredible-looking software, allowing many features your camera might not already have to be added, mostly in the form of scripts. Basically, Canon made it possible for the camera to boot additional software stored on your memory card. And if your Canon supports this you can get the software from this wiki to do it. Almost unlimited possibilities.

Anyway, I haven't tried this latter software as yet but a quick experimentation with the additional stock software allows this quite easily. I hooked the camera up to my laptop, set it in the other room, and remotely accessed it to take some pics - just for the geeky fun of it.

With my previous camera I occasionally used the computer-control to take very precise pics; like when even touching the camera might throw off it's position or when I needed to use both my hands to hold something in place for a shot but I didn't know how long it would take to get in place, thus the timer wouldn't work for it. In the latter case I'd use some voice-activated software like Voicenet and set it up to press the space bar when I told it to. A few times I was doing some 360 shots of items, or stop-motion for a customer or something, and just saying "take pic" after each movement was a lot easier.

Worked well and should be able to do it with this camera using one of the afore-mentioned softwares.

Successfully Debricked WT54G V5, Drilling Limestone and Annoying Know-It-Alls, Turning off UAC Notification in Vista Windows Security Center

What?! You say, two blog entries in two days?


Successfully Debricked WT54G V5

Well, a few hours was all it took... Hours better spent making money or working on finishing our house or something.

Basically, this was the second WT54G router I got for our long-distance broadband Internet experiment. Version 5 of this router. For those who know about the WRT54G's you're probably mumbling "piece of junk" or something similar under your breath.

Why would Linksys take an infinitely customizable unit like the WT54G and half the memory and put on OS on it that was limited and couldn't easily be re-burned with a new one?

I don't know, but I was really happy when someone figured out how to do it. I had burned the micro version of DD-WRT onto this router and it worked fine. But one day while doing some experimenting it turned up dead. All lights on, wouldn't reset even with the hard reset method. No pings to it, and scanning it with a network scanner and packet sniffer showed nothing.

Dead.

So I put it on a back shelf until I had the time to mess with it.

When I did get a chance to screwed around with it I again tried the same reset methods I did earlier, with no luck. So I took a deep breath and popped it open. After identifying the correct chip (why did Linksys feel the need to keep changing the board around? Oh yea; so they could limit the amount of memory it used - seems pretty deliberate when considering the small price difference and the number of people who customize these things) I found the correct two connections to short. Pretty risky stuff but it's dead anyway...

So that didn't work. I proceeded to the next step, ground out one of the afore-mentioned pins to the board's ground.

Boom! As soon as I did I started getting pings from it's default IP address (you have to remember to add the "-t" to the ping command so it doesn't stop after four).

Then it was a quick upload via Linksys's TFTP program (Windows has a built-in command line one also). At first I was going to put the original firmware back on but this didn't seem to work. Hmmm, I forgot - it uploads quickly but takes a few minutes (maybe five) to burn it.

No matter - I'd rather put the DD-WRT software back on it. I got the updated version - hoping the reason it frigged up before was an older version of the Micro that might have had bugs or some such.

The micro version went on fine, a few minutes for it to burn itself, and then it reset and everything was back to normal again.

A quick set up of WPA AES, changing the default IP (and switching my computer's IP back to it's previous - the computer's IP has to be changed to access the web-interface for the router. Unless, of course, your network is in the "192.168.1.? range as a default), the password, turning off loopback, and some other settings and back in biz.

Oh yea, and bumping the power up above the manufacturer's default.

I'm experimenting with a NAT proxy and needed the router for this.

Drilling Limestone and Annoying Know-It-Alls

Ugh. Drilling into stone. We're wrapping up our dining room remodel and want to put a mantel on. The old one came up from the floor and wasn't attached real well. I guess you can't blame the guys who built the house. Way back then it had to be days of effort just to drill a large hole in stone.

But it still takes awhile nowadays. Not that I could go full-blast and drill some holes quicker. But a little research on the limestone our house is made up, and some common sense - says that a little time needs to be taken with it.

Otherwise I'll have what is all over the exterior of the house - spiderwebs of cracked stones from the heat and vibration of the drilling that people did.

I've had people give me lots of (un-informed usually) advice on this sort of thing.

Why is it that people who who have built things, even a number of things, think that that makes them an expert in it? And especially in something specific like limestone?

There was one person who physically got up and walked out the room when I was telling him about how I had taken my time to drill the large holes for the satellite dish mount, because I didn't want to damage the stones. This particularly person apparently thought I should have come to him for advice before hand, and that I hadn't done it the best way. But if I had followed the advice of others right about now I'd be seeing the stone cracks appearing.

I should go out and take a few pics of the holes that were drilled by previous tenants in this house, and the damage they did versus the older holes that were drilled by those who knew what the were doing. But it's just too damn cold and windy and snowy right now ;)

What is it with people sometimes anyway?

Just because they've done something, maybe even a number of times - they think they're an expert on that particular subject?

I see it all the time with our dogs. Outside of a vet or other professional who deals with dogs - what makes someone think they know more about our dogs then we do?

Someone who sees the dogs a few times a year or someone who's with the dogs almost every waking moment?

It bugs me, and it shouldn't matter but it does.

I see the same thing with other people and their kids. There's always someone giving people advice on their kids, many times unwarranted or un-asked for.

Then there's the other thing, along the same lines, that bugs me even more.

Sure, it's annoying when someone comes up to you and begins to tell you how you should do something with an air of superiority. Annoying, overbearing, etc.

Of course there's those who keep it to themselves, or tell others how you should be doing something, or whatever.

But the worse, at least for me, is another animal altogether. Those who don't have the balls to tell you something face-to-face, yet don't have the civility to keep it to themselves.

I've sure you've run across them. The ones who stand a little behind you, or off to the side, somewhere where they know they are in your earshot but not talking directly to you - and offer up their opinions on your life, how you should take care of your dogs, raise your kids, wash your car; you name it. Usually confronting them gives you a "What? I don't know what you're talking about." or a wave of the hand. Now that's low, cowardly, and just not polite.

Some people are such ignorant, holier-than-thou, know-it-alls sometimes.

How did I get from drilling holes to this? Heh. Anyway, enough ranting for one day...

Turning off UAC Notification in Vista Windows Security Center

For those who have turned off User Account Control or UAC in Windows Vista you also may want to turn off the Windows Security Center's notification of this. Otherwise it's always going to show a big red warning and pop up a balloon each time Windows loads. Unless you turn off the security center altogether (something I do sometimes for some).

Unfortunately Microsoft didn't allow you the option of whether to monitor it or not, at least in some of the Vista versions.

For that (if you're comfortable using the registry editor - which looks the same as XP's) you can go to the entry: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center" and make the entry "UacDisableNotify" a '1'. Reset your computer and it shouldn't show up anymore.

Tweaking Vista, TV Converter Box Program, Bricked WT54G, Minifox for Firefox

Tweaking Vista

Vista. Yea, you've all heard of the problems or more then likely ran into them yourself if you got it on a new computer system or installed it.

I've been helping people with it, usually to get rid of it in most cases or live with it and learn it in others. But really I haven't had the opportunity to sit down with it and figure the in's and out's of it, on a deeper level.

My new laptop came with it. Of course, my first thought was to dump Vista and install XP. I'd dealt with so many headaches concerning Vista, and read about many more.

Well, no, I guess my first thought wasn't exactly to dump Vista - my first thought was to dump the incredibly slow and resource-munching Norton. I did that; which is pretty much mandatory with me. Norton, in any of it's present forms is a hulk of bloatware. It does it's job, especially for those who really need it, but there's many better alternatives.

So after that I set out to really get into the 'innards' of Vista and see if I could make it usable for a super power user like me, and maybe go a bit further for some of my customers then just making sure they know how to use it and turn off the standard crap that they don't need and slugs everything down.

After a week of tinkering I've sped Vista up tremendously; I've gotten rid of the idiotic pop-up messages that ask you questions all the time (like from the "User Account Control" [first thing I disabled] and the built-in firewall), turned off the useless sidebar (installed Rocketdock instead) and hungry real-time indexing, unselected some start up services that were totally unnecessary, put on a compatible firewall and anti-virus, and am delving into the other services that can be disabled. Black Viper, who you'll know if if you're a tech or a tweaking junkie, has some great stuff out. Absolutely required reading.

I eventually partitioned the harddrive and stuck XP on another partition, then repaired the freaky boot stuff that Vista uses (and the XP boot loader destroyed) as well as the MBR. The whole thing took a couple hours of playing around, though it's not that complicated once you use some of the various software made to make it easier. I wanted to figure it out myself though.

Now I have XP on it also, with a nice menu for dual-booting. Maybe Linux next.

But you know what? With the tweaks and such I don't mind Vista. It's not great, but it's not real bad.

There's a bunch of stuff it won't run, especially some of the higher level stuff. Things that you guys who maybe stick to using browsers and e-mail and Office might not run into. But I bet sometime you'll find something it won't run, at least until software is updated from each manufacturer/programming house.

Even with the tweaks the normal use of the GUI interface is slightly slower then XP on the same machine. Aero may be the culprit, but it's too damned pretty to get rid of (at least until I get sick of it - and then likely I'll turn off themes altogether; a great savings in speed and resources). And some programs seem to run slower, especially their interfaces which, again; may have something to do with the Aero theme.

On the other hand some things blaze while they go somewhat slower on XP. Math-oriented, those with high levels of processing for example. Celestia is a good demo - the 64 bit architecture of the machine as well as Vista makes the smooth rendering even smoother on this machine.

So, I plan on keeping it on my laptop - running alongside XP, but more then likely the primary OS on that particular computer. Why, oh why, did MS make such a crappy system out of the box with so many nonsense and wasteful and plain idiotic parts that could; easily be turned off to make it run better and easier and more user friendly.

My conclusions are fairly simple.

It's a crappy operating system in it's stock form. For those who don't do a whole lot with their computers they may not notice it much, or it may be a minor annoyance. More then likely a good percentage will really not want to switch at this point or may want to go back to XP (like so many already have and will continue to for awhile).

If you're into tweaking or have someone like me to do it for you; Vista can be hyped up, streamlined, and made much much more usable and faster. You really won't mind it as long as your favorite programs run on it in that case. Otherwise, avoid it for now.

TV Converter Box Program

We don't live too far from a good-sized city. Unfortunately the area is serviced by a somewhat disreputable and money-hungry conglomerate. You've probably heard of them if you live in this part of the country, and if you have you've probably heard the same problems with them.

We've only about six hundred feet from a cable line but the company refuses to run it to us. Scratch that - they'd run it for us; for thousands and thousands of dollars. We've tried for years to get them to.

On an earlier blog entry you'll see the set up I put into place using two of my hacked routers to span the distance between a neighbor and us, so as to allow us to share his broadband. But after awhile, though we had the system in place, we lost the interest in giving the money-grubbers a cent of our money - either for Internet or TV.

So we get our TV off the satellite (DishNetwork) which works tremendously well and has been digital for years. HD channels are also available but we've never gotten around to go with it as it costs a bit more.

But for local channels we need to receive them off-the-air. Our TV doesn't have an HD converter box nor integral tuner for it, even though it's compatible, and our local stations are simulcasting in both analog and HD right now, and have been for quite some time.

As most of you probably know eventually those receiving over-the-air broadcasts will have to be receiving it in HD as the analog signals will end next year.

What a pisser, huh? We have all this high quality TV equipment with a high quality digital signal but to receive a couple local channels we have to get them in a crappy analog signal, and will be out in the cold next year when they stop broadcasting in analog.

Like many areas, our local TV stations aren't carried by the satellite company as yet, otherwise it wouldn't be a problem.

So at midnight on January 1st I logged onto The Government's TV Converter Program Website and applied for a couple vouchers for converters boxes. Yes, they turned the site on at exactly midnight ;)

Unfortunately it seems that the general idea is for the government to supply these vouchers for the cheaper or moderately cheap boxes. In other words most will only take the digital HD signal and down-convert them to analog - at least it's looking that way.

What we want is a converter that takes the digital HD signal and outputs it into an equally good signal via any number of ways so that our TV can access that high quality signal. We'll have to wait and see what the boxes will really be capable of doing. My guess is they will at least have RCA cables and maybe S-video; better then analog.

This whole process though... Sure, the analog range is kinda splotchy and wasteful because our transmitters are much more precise now then when TV first went on the air. And the bandwidth being wasted can be used for bigger and better things. But I can't help but wonder about this whole thing. The explanations the FCC gives, well, I think a group of politicians are getting their hands royally greased in this whole deal by certain large manufacturers and services, while we; the taxpayer, take up the slack by helping to provide the vouchers and paying for converters our of our own pockets as a stopgap measure for those who receive off-the-air signals. What a boondoggle.

Bricked WT54G.

Ugh, out of the blue my WT54G V5 bricked on me. I'm going to try all the usual methods first, but I'm afraid that I am going to have to take it apart and do a manual restart. Great. Risky.

My WR54G V3 is still running strong on the Linux DD-WRT software (though I was writing a configuration and accidentally turned it off before it was finished. A simple reset fixed it, no problem.). But the non-Linux version seems to be pretty flaky on the V5, squished onto the smaller space as it is too.

Minifox for Firefox

For those who like to tweak Firefox and want as much screen real estate as possible check out the Minifox extension. It squeezes everything down, gaining you a few lines of space in your browser window, There's also a version for Thunderbird, though I haven't tried the Thunderbird one as yet.